(RNS) — A predominantly white church that sought to learn about its racial history has now dedicated a memorial to the enslaved people who once worked on the building’s land in downtown Washington, D.C.
First Congregational United Church of Christ, which dates to 1865, dedicated six recently installed stained-glass panels, titled “Forever in the Path,” on Sunday (Sept. 14).
A decade ago, the congregation began carefully studying its roots. Some members knew that the church’s founders were abolitionists and helped support the creation of Howard University, a historically Black institution in Washington. But when congregants marked the church’s 150th anniversary in 2015, Howard University School of Divinity professor Renee K. Harrison, the preacher for that occasion, challenged them to look deeper into its history, including into the former slave owners from whom the land was purchased.
Now, Harrison, who authored the book “Black Hands, White House: Slave Labor and the Making of America,” said the UCC church’s yearslong initiative to investigate and share that history is “highly unusual” — especially as a predominantly white congregation.
Renee K. Harrison. (Courtesy photo)
“I think the most important thing is that a Christian institution, a white Christian institution, decided to celebrate the people that work the land — both the celebration of those that were there and those that are there,” Harrison said in an interview days before the dedication ceremony.
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The Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, canon theologian of the Washington National Cathedral, said the use of stained glass can serve multiple purposes now, as it did in medieval times when windows were not merely decorative but told biblical stories to illiterate people who could not read the Bible for themselves.
“It’s important that these people are finding ways to bring the Black story into a sacred space,” she said upon learning of the project at First Congregational UCC. “What it’s sayi …